H.E. Bates Companion

London: Jonathan Cape, 1935 (October 28). Dedication: "To Edward J. O'Brien." Bates's fifth story collection includes fourteen pieces, nine of which are either narrated by a young boy or otherwise concerned with boyhood.

Richard Church wrote that "his new collection of stories shows him growing more powerful, more realistic. His style is harder, more austere, but with this gain in force, Mr. Bates has lost none of his lyrical beauty, his singleness of theme." Graham Greene writes in The Spectator, that "if one sets Mr. Bates's best tales (and they can all be found in these last two volumes) against the best of Tchchov's, I do not believe it would be possible with any conviction to argue that the Russian was a finer artist. He was an artist only of greater range...Mr. Bates is supreme among English short story writers." Geoffrey West observed that Bates "seems at times to work a shade overmuch to a formula" but found the collection overall "bright with life, with individuals alive and interacting, and with the sweeping beauties of broad country backgrounds."

Reviews:
Christian Science Monitor (December 31, 1935, attached)
John O'London's Weekly (November 9, 1935, Richard Church, attached)
New Statesman (November 16, 1935, attached)
The Spectator (November 22, 1935, Graham Greene, attached)
The Times (October 29, 1935, p. 20, attached)
Times Literary Supplement (November 9, 1935, p. 719, Geoffrey West, attached)

Contains: Beauty's Daughters, Cut and Come Again, The Mill, The Revelation, Waiting Room, Little Fish, The Station, The House with the Apricot, The Irishman, The Plough, Jonah and Bruno, The Bath, Harvest Moon, The Pink Cart.